Transdisciplinary Communities of Practice to Resolve Health Problems in Southeast Asian Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining Communities

Abstract

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has been a major part of people's livelihood in the rural areas of many developing countries, including those in Southeast Asia (SEA). Nevertheless, because of the use of mercury, ASGM activities have significant local and global adverse impacts on the environment and ASGM community health. Although there have been many monodisciplinary projects by academic researchers and governments to solve the environmental and health problems in SEA ASGM communities, they have not been sufficient to solve the complex socioeconomic problems. This review first outlines the nature of the SEA ASGM activities and the consequent environmental, community health, and socioeconomic problems and then introduces an approach using transdisciplinary communities of practice that involves both academic and nonacademic participants to relieve these wicked ASGM problems and to improve the environmental governance and community health in ASGM communities in SEA.

Keywords: ASGM; Southeast Asia; TDCoPs; artisanal and small-scale gold mining; mercury; transdisciplinary.

Figure 1

Transdisciplinary communities of practice (TDCoPs): a process to solve the wicked ASGM problems in SEA. Reproduced with permission from [69]. 2015, Basu N et al. The credit for the summary on the community health hazards goes to Basu N et al., 2015 “Integrated Assessment of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Ghana—Part 1: Human health Review”.